Gamers playing games like Perfect Dark Zero and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter may have noticed that there are occasions when the screen appears to tear while playing. Team.com talked to Chris Satchell of the Games Development Group at Microsoft to try and pin down why this is happening. Many gamers have speculated that the issue is related to the fact that in order to get better frame rate performance from games, some developers disable the vertical sync on the console, or v-sync. Satchell responds: “Users are correct; ‘Page tearing’ is an artifact of changing the displayed frame of the game while the display device is partially through displaying the previous frame.”

PC Gaming enthusiasts have seen this in their games for a while, but the difference on the PC is that the user is usually given control over the v-sync setting, and can either disable it for performance, or enable it for picture fidelity. Gamers on the Xbox 360 haven’t been given that choice; for games like PDZ and GRAW, v-sync is always off.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t really offer a good solution for Xbox 360 owners. Satchell’s brilliant suggestion: “There isn’t anything I would recommend for consumers that can help alleviate the problem. I think when gamers get their hands on this years 2nd generation Xbox 360 titles they will be blown away with the visual excellence. So my only advice would be; make sure you have an Xbox 360 this holiday.” Microsoft appears to be using the distraction defense for this issue, where in an ideal world, gamers would be given the option to enable and disable v-sync on their own, so those gamers who value picture fidelity can get the imagery that they deserve from a next generation platform like the Xbox 360.

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